Norway: FLSmidth has agreed with HeidelbergCement on a one year service agreement contract to support its Norcem cement plant in Kjøpsvik, Norway. The plant is the most northerly in the world. An FLSmidth team will monitor the plant and diagnose and advise the Kjøpsvik-based operators in real-time. This will enable improvement in performance, increased availability and reduced operating costs.

"Optimising equipment performance is difficult without access to a wide range of specialists," said Skage Hem, FLSmidth's vice president for Global Research and Development. "It is not easy for customers with plants in remote corners of the world to recruit specialists. We have an experienced global specialist team ready to support the customers at all
hours of the day anywhere in the world."

Service is increasingly important for FLSmidth and is a growing business. In the last quarter alone service business across FLSmidth grew by 24% compared with the same quarter of 2014. Although global growth has slowed down, the equipment of many of its existing customers still needs to be maintained and optimised in order to increase plant productivity. With more than 90% of the lifecycle cost of cement plants being operating expenditure cost, service agreements are an area of continued growth potential for FLSmidth.

Read Global Cement's visit report from the Kjøpsvik plant here.